[OSM-talk] Query Overpass for multiple small areas

[Roland Olbricht]

Hi all,

> Was unsure what the best practices for querying overpass were, and was
> wondering if someone could point me in a good direction.
>
> I'm trying to query Overpass for a small amount of data over many small,
> sparsely populated areas.  Was wondering if it made more sense to run
> separate queries for the bounding box of each small area, or one query
> for the bounding box of all queries.  The first approach sends more
> queries against smaller areas, the second approach sends only one query
> against a much larger area.

In general, I would suggest to combine all areas with the union 
operator. Or even, simpler, just concatenate the queries. Overpass can 
handle multiple print statements.

When your return time is below a few seconds, then it makes sense to 
combine more requests.

Best regards,

Roland